Amazon appears to have a soft spot for Colorados' Park Meadows mall. It was home to one of the company’s first mall kiosks for selling Amazon electronics like the Echo, Fire and Kindle. And it is now the location of Amazon’s second 4-star store, the latest brick-and-mortar experiment from the online behemoth.

This is right in my backyard, so naturally I got there as soon as I could. The store opened on Thursday, and I managed to get there on Saturday night. My first impression: The store was packed. It sits almost directly above the Apple Store at Park Meadows, which is usually the most-trafficked location in the mall. However, that night, Amazon 4-star was definitely winning.

There have been plenty of reviews of the 4-star Soho after it first opened. I agree with Quartz’s assessment that the primary objective of the store is to promote Prime. If I would tweak that assessment at all, it would be to say that it is a store designed to, first and foremost, promote Amazon – Amazon Prime, of course, as evidenced by the prominent discounts available to Prime members, as well as Amazon Basics and the full range of Amazon consumer electronics. It’s important to note that, not one “mall block” away, there is an Amazon Kiosk in Park Meadows that already sells all the same electronics that are on display one level up in the 4-star Store – the company had no problem doubling up on shelf-space dedicated to Echo’s and Shows at this mall.

Similar to the Soho store, Amazon features locally-trending products. This is an extension of a strategy already developed in the company’s book stores, taken to general products across Amazon’s site. You can see a photo of the “Trending Around New York” table here (scroll down about halfway). It is clear that in Colorado, at least, Winter isn’t coming – it’s here, as the “Trending Around Denver” had a definite theme to it: heat. Heated mattress pads, window insulation, and space heaters. The difference in priorities among the two cities was pretty much a stereotype.

Winter is here around Denver, according to the Amazon 4-star StoreNikki Baird

And that leads to my conclusion about the Amazon 4-star store: whether you buy into the ratings or not, there is something forced about the assortment in the store. Maybe even something hollow. It’s one thing when there is a personality, or even a brand promise behind an assortment. But Amazon’s assortment is so enormous, and I have to imagine there are far more products with 4 stars or more than what I saw, that it’s hard to feel like there is much rhyme or reason to what goes on the shelf.

Underscoring that hollowness is a sense of self-fulfilling prophecy. The store had been open for two days by the time I got there. The store was starting to look worked-over, but the “holiday deals” table took that to an extreme, where representative items sat over empty shelves.

Four stars alone is not enough to win shoppers - deals still make a difference.Nikki Baird

In the end, I felt like I had entered a Brookstone or Sharper Image reimagined for the internet age, where everything about the store was supposed to make me feel like it was okay to buy stuff, no questions asked (“The products aren’t just good here, they’re great!"). Just their very presence in the store is supposed to be enough to buy my trust, using the product ratings of my peers. But to say the assortment was eclectic is an understatement. And, as evidenced by the deals table vs. the rest of the store, shoppers are still savvy enough to pick and choose, even among things that are theoretically self-evidently great.

Park Meadows is no Soho, but the shoppers that frequent that mall are definitely more well-heeled than the average shopper. But it seems that even here, it’s not the stars that matter. It’s the prices. If Amazon 4-star is trying to continue the company’s shift from prices to quality or convenience, I’m not sure that it’s working.

Nikki Baird is a vice president of retail innovation at Aptos, a retail enterprise solution provider. Her opinions are her own.

I am the vice president of Retail Innovation at Aptos, a retail enterprise solution provider. I am charged with accelerating retailers’ ability to innovate. I have been a top global retail industry influencer for several years, with a background in retail and technology. I ...